Month: September 2022

Vladimir putin owes Xi Jinping an apology, for he carried a whiff of failure into his meeting with China’s leader in the Uzbek city of Samarkand on September 15th. That taint of humiliation follows bruising Russian setbacks in the war on Ukraine that Mr Putin chose to wage. Listen to this story.Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android. Your browser does not support the <audio> element. Listen to this story Save time by listening to our audio articles as you multitask OK Mr Putin’s offence is compounded by…

With its modest budget and gritty subject matter, few expected the film “Return to Dust” to become a hit. Chinese cinema, which is heavily censored, tends to be dominated by light-hearted fare and patriotic blockbusters. “Return to Dust” is a complicated love story set in an impoverished bit of countryside. Yet in the first week of September it was one of China’s top-grossing films. Its total box-office earnings have exceeded 110m yuan ($15.8m). Listen to this story.Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android. Your browser does not support…

These are good times for local officials who want to build expensive infrastructure. To revive a flagging economy, battered by draconian pandemic-control measures, the central government is giving them freer rein. The southern province of Guangxi has a project that fits the bill: a canal costing $10.5bn that will link its main river system to the sea. It will involve a spree of demolition, digging, dredging and building over the next four and a half years. Mulled over for more than a century, the project began last month. Listen to…

For an aspiring Communist Party bigwig, Hu Chunhua’s back story seems hard to beat. One of six siblings born into rural poverty, he was the first in his county to attend China’s prestigious Peking University. On graduation in 1983, he joined the party and volunteered to work in Tibet. There he caught the eye of the local party chief, Hu Jintao (no relation), who became China’s top leader in 2002. Soon Hu Chunhua (pictured) was the youngest provincial governor and a member of the party’s Central Committee. Insiders began referring…

Advertisement On September 14, Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Nur-Sultan (the once and future Astana) on a state visit to Kazakhstan. It was Xi’s first overseas trip since the outbreak of COVID-19 in January 2020. This was swiftly followed by Xi travelling to Samarkand, Uzbekistan, for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit – a gathering of a regional bloc increasingly defined by a triangle of China-India-Russia. The visit comes amid a setback to the Russian military efforts in Ukraine – with the Russian retreat in Kharkiv viewed by some…

Another dilemma Mr Xi faces, added Mr Feigenbaum, is that while “he will want to buck up Moscow generally and Putin personally… if he leans too hard into that, he will drive a wedge with other neighbours whom Beijing wishes to cultivate”, such as ex-Soviet Central Asian countries. BBC

Advertisement The fate of Apple Daily Taiwan, Taiwan’s version of the Hong Kong pro-democracy tabloid, has been uncertain for some time. Most recently, the online outlet has shifted hands to Singaporean entrepreneur Joseph Phua, rebranding as Next Apple News. Concerns about the sale have continued to be raised by Taiwanese civil society groups. Apple Daily Taiwan was one of the major media outlets in Taiwan, having entered the Taiwanese market from Hong Kong in the 2000s. Apple Daily Taiwan distinguished itself with a strong commercial focus on gossip about celebrities,…

A man walks in Shanghai as Typhoon Muifa loomed on Wednesday. Shanghai grounded all flights from Pudong and Hongqiao airports, halted port operations, closed subway stations and limited speed for ground trains. Ningbo, Taizhou, and Zhoushan city were ordered to suspend classes for the day. Photo: EPA-EFE South China Morning Post